In an examination in which the same questions are given to plural examinees, in general, the plural examiners are required to give answers within a predetermined uniform time limit. In such an examination, some examinees who had finished answering the questions early would have remaining time and not know what to do. Effective use of this remaining time has been sought.
As an example of the effective use of the above-described remaining time, an attempt to give additional questions later to the examinees has been conventionally made. Further improvement in the understanding of the examinees is the main object of this attempt. However, because the remaining time is different for each examinee and questions to improve the understanding are also different for each examinee, it is not always proper if the examinees are given the same additional questions. In consideration of this circumstance, when additional questions are added, it is desirable to give questions that are different in the number of questions and contents of the questions for each examinee in accordance with the examination time and the understanding of each examinee.
Some technologies have been known relating to test-giving devices that give questions in which the number and contents of questions being given in accordance with the examination time and the understanding of the examinees. One of the technologies is to give as many exercise questions that suit a purpose of a student, such as a review of the studied field or proficiency tests, as the number of questions that should be able to be solved within a time that the student has. Another one of the technologies is to give more elaborate questions for each student in consideration of the questions to which the student has given an incorrect answer. In this technology, history of question that the student has given an incorrect answer to is stored, and the questions that the student has given an incorrect answer to are given in the second time or the subsequent time.
In order to give questions with contents in accordance with the understanding of the examinee, it is necessary to assess the understanding of the examinee. In order to assess this understanding, information such as a correct/incorrect answer status to various types of questions given in examinations that the examinee has taken in the past and a correct-answer percentage of the examination is used.
However, the understanding of the examinee is not always correctly represented by these pieces of information. For example, even if an examinee's answer to a question that allowed the examinee to select a correct choice from multiple choices is a correct answer, the process to derive the correct answer, i.e., whether the examinee obtained the answer on his/her own or the answer is mere product of chance, is not determined from the fact of the correct answer. This is also true for the case in which the examinee's answer to a question that allowed the examinee to select a correct choice from multiple choices was incorrect. In other words, whether the cause of the incorrect answer is lack of ability of the examinee or a minor careless mistake is not determined from the fact of the incorrect answer.
In regard to the technology to properly assess the understanding of the examinee, a technology of a study information processing apparatus has been known, and the apparatus properly evaluates an ability of examinees but does not change as the difficulty of examination questions changes, and supports the studying of the examinees in an efficient and effective manner. In this technology, determination of the understanding of the examinee on the examination questions is made on the basis not only of whether answers made by the examinees to the examination questions are correct or incorrect, but of a correct-answer percentage of the examinee for the entire examination and a reference correct-answer percentage set for each of the examination questions in advance. In this manner, this technology provides a proper evaluation of ability of examinees and allows for a determination of whether correctness/incorrectness of the answer to each examination question reflected the understanding of the examinee, resulted from chance, or resulted from a minor careless mistake.